Pain and Truth
by Bal'ferrin
Summary: Angst. One-shot. Post-Kaworu. NOT yaoi. My first try- please go easy :(


Pain and Truth : Bal'ferrin's first fanfic 

Disclaimer: I don't own Eva. I don't own Oedipus. I'm not making money off this. Blah blah blah…

A/N: This is going to stay a one-shot for now, because I don't have the energy to write additional chapters. Still stands well enough on its own though, I guess…

Some characters die…

Please don't hate me =(

__

'Fate is cruel to those she favours…'

An unseen swarm of cicadas droned thunderously in the background, the monotony of their voices the only constant in a changing world.

NERV, the Angels, Instrumentation it was over.

And now…

The great Tokyo-3, fortress of mankind, lay empty. The magnificent modern replica of Babylon, with its half-demolished streets and buildings, baked and simmered under a solemn sun. The gray, grid-like streets lying barren of the human life they once protected. 

They were gone. 

All except for one young boy.

Shinji Ikari's dull eyes stared lifelessly at his worn sneakers as they carried him through the empty streets. If he paid just a little more attention to himself he would have felt the blistering heat through the soles of his shoes, through the sweat-stained school uniform, on his skin, on his hair… everywhere but inside.

It had snowed, yesterday.

He never thought it would have been possible. 

Snow. 

White blades cutting through an eternal summer, if only for a few hours. But it had come. 

A white burial for those who had none.

Asuka… still in a coma after… _that_.

Rei… no longer herself.

Kaji… gone.

Misato… answering to a UN tribunal.

Touji… crippled and far away.

Kensuke, just… far away.

The only one who had not gone was Father. He was still as distant as he used to be. The ever cold Gendo Ikari had spared not a word, not a glance for his only son as he was escorted onto a UN helicopter and taken away.

The Children had somehow been forgotten in the world's haste to lash out against SEELE's monstrous plans, revealed by documents released upon the death of double agent Kaji Ryouji. Immediately after they had pried his pilot's capsule from the lifeless, beaten husk, Eva-01- the berserker, who had lived up to its title even in its final moments- had been restrained by the UN and taken to facilities somewhere, along with the body of one Kaworu Nagisa, Fifth Children, last of the Angels and friend to Shinji Ikari.

Everyone in Tokyo-3 had moved out long ago. 

Those NERV personnel ignored by the UN were allowed to leave the city, which had become a cursed place- 'the Grave of Innocence.' The Red Cross had moved into the Tokyo-3 hospital to take care of the wounded. But there were not many patients, and not many doctors, and those shortened ranks continued to thin with each passing turn of the Earth.

Not for the first time in his life, Shinji Ikari was all alone.

But never had it hurt so much.

It had been different, in the past.

No matter how painful his father's abandonment was, it had seemed almost like the natural postlude to his mother's disappearance. 

In the past, being alone was a constant. 

Shinji Ikari is alone. Alone is Shinji Ikari. Forever and always.

Now, not only was he alone, but he was alone after having tasted the dour fruits of friendship.

From his cheek fell one last tear and it splashed to the ground, narrowly missing the threadbare shoes. And not long after leaving its former owner, the tear sizzled and vanished, the sound inaudible through the monotonous drone of the cicadas.

***

Shinji pushed open the doors and darted inside quickly as if fleeing the intolerable heat and loneliness outside.

Within the hospital the occasional Red Cross volunteer bustled by, fewer again than there were yesterday. Shinji didn't even look up at the foreigners as he walked past them. There was no point. Eye contact begged questions, questions he did not wish to answer.

'Who are you?'

_I-I am… Shinji._

'Why did you come here?'

__

…

'Why did you come here?'

__

To-to visit… my friend.

'Why are you still around?'

__

… I don't know.

'Where is your family?'

__

…

'Do you have a family?'

__

… I… I don't know

The younger Ikari closed his eyes against a flood of painful questions that coated his mind like a stifling blanket of age-old dust.

Elsewhere, the elder Ikari faced questions as well. Yet the caustic fire of words hurt him, not at all. 

&&&&&&

After nearly two hours of the UN persecutor bashing NERV for the treatment of the Children, and an additional hour of intense questioning designed to reveal the monster that is the former NERV commander, Gendo Ikari still looked as calm as ever.

Calmly the elder Ikari folded his white-gloved hands and leered at the persecutor from behind them. Like Fuyutsuki, he had been allowed to retain his former attire- in fact the persecution virtually demanded it, all the better to show the public what he was really like.

His question, when he asked it in his cold, cruel voice, was simple, but its answer devastating to the case against him.

Gendo Ikari, father of Shinji and wife of Yui, said simply: "And where are they now, prosecutor?"

&&&

An unseen swarm of cicadas droned almost muted in the background, the monotony of their voices the only constant in a changing world.

Shinji's movement had come to an end, and the young boy now stood frozen, despite the heat.

Thoughts whirled through his lethargic mind with all the speed of a bullet entering the skull of a damned man.

All because of one tiny mark.

A single brown clipboard dangled tauntingly from the end of a bed whose plain surface was once graced by Asuka's comatose form. That had changed little since last he was here.

'Asuka S. Langley' was still written there in the sprawling script of the nurse that checked her in. Her date of entry, beside it, retained the same neat mark of a hospital stamp. Nothing was different… except for one miniscule, seemingly insignificant checkmark. 

And with that mark, Asuka Sohryu Langley, the Second Child, bane to the existence of one Shinji Ikari and his friends, left him just as everyone else had.

On the outside there was no reaction from the morose child.

But his timid steps grew smaller by unnoticeable measurements as they took him away from the hospital, and through the sweltering streets…

***

An unseen swarm of cicadas droned loudly in the background, the monotony of their voices the only constant in a changing world.

The sounds of construction were gone, now. What need was there to rebuild a city nobody wished to live in?

Shinji stood outside the plain metal door for a long time, his eyes staring straight ahead as if contemplating the glistening smooth texture of the portal and the number. 

__

402.

Completely unbidden, Shinji was struck with the memory of the first time he had been beyond the forboding portal. He had been so scared he'd wished…

It was almost funny now. How pathetic humiliation was in the face of true pain.

He knocked timidly.

And waited.

And waited.

Waited…

Finally, no longer able to stand the ceaseless droning of cicadas and the intolerable midday heat, Shinji turned the never-locked knob…

And for the second time that day the boy froze.

Unlike Asuka's hospital room, Rei's apartment had changed a lot.

The pile of letters in the doorway were gone. 

The piles of lingerie lying around the room, gone. 

The pair of glasses on the table, no more.

But what made Shinji freeze was not the cleanliness of the room.

No, what made his muscles stop working and his heart pound were the three simple words scribbled on the opposite wall in a malicious red that crawled down the wall and collected on the floor.

The words were: 'I am I.'

The young boy stumbled a few steps into the hallway before his eyes widened in further horror at the too-neat scene before him. 

Rei was there, as expected. On her bed. Calm. Her short blue hair flowing along her pillow like the halo of an angel. Her ghostly red eyes closed against the all-too familiar ceiling as if in sleep.

But the once-white sheets that covered her slumbering form had become a dark crimson.

And the only pure thing beyond the unblemished, ghostly white of Rei's neck were a single pair of glasses.

Some of the drab sunlight drifting in from the open doorway found its way to the pristine lenses of the leering object, and for this Shinji was glad. The empty glare of the spectacles prevented the young boy from seeing the …

With nothing but escape on his mind, Shinji ran away.

***

An unseen swarm of cicadas droned quietly in the background, the monotony of their voices the only constant in a changing world.

This was… it. 

The home of 'Shin-chan's lovely suite.'

And Shinji Ikari's last refuge.

The shades were closed. The electricity still worked, of course, if only to feed the hospital's needs. But Shinji had no need for light.

The young boy squatted before PenPen's darkened metal fridge for a long time. He had knocked on it many times before, and waited just as often. PenPen hadn't come out since Misato was taken away, and the door to the penguin's chamber was jammed.

Somewhere deep inside the younger Ikari was glad. One less thing on his mind. One less blemish on his tainted mind.

Finally, unable to bear the overwhelming stench any longer, Shinji stood and retreated to the safety of his room.

Soon the tune of the cicadas were drowned out by the mournful lamentations of one lonely boy and the deep, resounding voice of his cello.

***

So now he was here.

It did not matter where here was.

Just that it defined where he was.

And that he wasn't alone.

Somehow… somehow it felt good. To be in the sterile room, with the sounds of shiny shoes echoing down ever emptier hallways.

It was just good to have be near somebody again. Anybody.

Anybody…

"Hello?"

Shinji's head snapped up at the words, directed toward his hunched form.

For what seemed like an eternity he stammered, far more than he had with any of the many pretty girls he had met in his short life. He hadn't had a conversation since… since…

But finally the boy managed to reward the boundless patience of the stranger.

"Hi."

And that simple word unlocked the floodgates of Shinji's misery, and mercilessly the past weeks tumbled out.

***

An unseen swarm of cicadas droned in the background, the monotony of their voices muted, the only constant in a changing world.

Shinji Ikari sat on the corner of the bed while the stranger, the man who called himself 'Foot,' sat on a chair, his chin resting on the back of the chair as Shinji wound to a finish.

"… and then I saw Rei…" He paused. And after a long moment's consideration managed to continue. "Dead. She had… died. No, that's not true. She had been dead… But now… it's like she's…" Shinji's sunken blue eyes finally got the courage to meet the cool amber orbs of his confidant. "gone."

The man named Foot smiled at Shinji, not a smile of joy, nor mocking, but one of pain. Somehow in a series of simple flexings of facial muscles the unshaved man managed to convey all of Shinji's pain and more.

"Does it hurt?" he asked in a voice that was at once crystal clear and intangibly delicate.

Shinji's deep blue eyes returned to staring at his worn shoes. "Hai" he said simply, quietly.

"Nothing I can tell you will take away that pain." The smile was still there, dimmer perhaps, but nevertheless present.

"I-I… know." A frown creased the boy's smooth features. He had wasted another's time, he knew, and he had-

"But you can stop your own pain. If you learn."

Blue eyes met green as a young boy sought salvation as desparately as a dehydrating man seeks water.

"How?"

"Meaning."

For a long moment nothing was said as the young boy mulled this over.

__

Meaning…

A trace of autumnal amusement blew leaf-like across Foot's smile, and the man continued. "As long as we are human, as long as we are with humans, suffering is inevitable."

Shinji nodded unconsciously in assent, as if he had reached the same conclusion before. "Hai, Foot-san" he said, his weary face beginning to show the sadness that hid behind.

"And the past, the past is unchangeable."

The collar of Shinji's uniform, now dry after so much time indoors, brushed against the skin of his neck as the young boy slowly nodded his head.

"So the only thing that we can do, the only thing that you can do, is to change your perspective… The Gods have suffered far more and far longer than any mortal, and yet did not succumb to despair. Prometheus endures more pain than any being should ever have to feel and yet does not go mad. How?" At this Foot stood and knelt before the Third Child. When he spoke again it was as if he was opening cupped palms to release into the world the singular gift of a butterfly. "Because they had a reason to suffer."

Shinji's brows furrowed, and Foot explained further, his voice somehow sounding no different than it had when he was sitting on the chair.

"For the Gods, it was that so long as time continues they will have better days ahead of them." Shinji's expression suddenly darkened. There was nothing ahead for him. Nothing, except deat-

His thoughts were cut off when Foot's crystal voice continued, unchanged and unchanging. "You think you have nothing to look forward to." Shinji's face took on a sour look of sorrow and the boy's collar rubbed against his neck again. Foot shook his head sadly in response. "You are wrong, Shinji. But I cannot convince you of that. Instead, think of the great Prometheus. Do you know how he bears his pain?" Shinji looked up, his eyes grasping for something- anything, so long as it could ease his misery.

"Prometheus, the giver of fire, deflects all his punishment with the knowledge that many others have benefited. That many others are happy, because of his actions. Can you understand that, Shinji? That even though you are emotionally and physically bereft, your spirit can still soar faster than the wind?"

There was no response.

Foot stood slowly, his own clothing rustling as it brushed against each other and his skin. "We are leaving, now." His piercing green eyes looked down at Shinji with sympathy. "There is nothing left for us to do here. I leave to understand on your own. Fate is cruel to those she favours, but may solace find you and save you from your demons."

His pained smile seemingly a permanent fixture on his face, Foot walked quietly away. At the exit he turned, his expression unreadable to the young Shinji, and he whispered too quietly, "I'm sorry."

It wasn't until the echoing footsteps had long faded away that Shinji found it within himself to cry again.

Salty liquid soaked his uniform, saturating the coarse cloth with the pains of yesterday, tomorrow, and forever more.

***

The cicadas were no more.

Chill and darkness, oh so soothing darkness, were the only sensations in Shinji's world now.

The lights were on. But there was no power to course through the tungsten wires, and the room remained in darkness. 

Still, outside the moon shone brighter than ever through a clear night sky, unaffected by the scenes it witnessed. Closed shades fought off the celestial body's intruding rays, preventing the natural, ghostly light from touching the last person in Tokyo-3.

If the light had streamed in it would have reflected quite nicely to send sparkles of ghostly white dancing across the walls. 

It would have played on the floor, and what covered it. 

It would have bathed the prone body of a young boy, a white funeral for he that has none.

Shinji's final thoughts, before pain finally fled his young person, were ones of understanding. How many millions were safe now, because of his sacrifice? How many children could play happily with their parents? How many boys cuddle with their girlfriends? How many… how many… how many…

A wistful smile creased his boyish face in the darkness.

Silently he thanked the kind foreigner, even though… 

Even though it didn't help…

&&&

And basking in the searing heat of the next morning, an unseen swarm of cicadas would drone, the monotony of their voices still the only constant in a changing world.

A/N: Love it, hate it, please drop me a line! Please!!

I'm so lonely…

I do have a potential plot lineup. Basically involving the traditional 'omfg there are more angels.' I also have a way to unkill… And since Pen-Pen, Asuka and Shinji haven't been proven dead yet, I won't even have to bother unkilling them =D

But I'm a lazy bastard.

And if I extend this it'll probably turn into WAFF.

Anyways, please read and review.

Arigato! ^.^


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